returning to play opposite the current version in
last summer’s “Gemini Man”; and Carrie Fisher,
whose younger self briefly returned digitally
in 2016’s “Star Wars: Rogue One” and appeared
again after her death, in “Star Wars: The Rise
of Skywalker.”
These instances have elicited scattered
skepticism — both of the quality of the
technology and the propriety of the revivals —
but audiences have largely accepted them.
Guy Williams, visual effects supervisor at
filmmaker Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital, said the
possibilities do offer a moral dilemma.
“The question isn’t so much if you use
somebody’s likeness to bring them back or to
create a digital version of them, it’s what you
do with it and the respect that you show to
it,” Williams said. “So that, to me, is the more
important question.”
Pablo Helman, the visual effects supervisor
behind the de-aging of Robert De Niro and
others in “The Irishman,” said he considers that
moral dilemma in his work.